RMC - WWI: The Tunnels of Death (2018)

December 1914. After 5 months of war, both the Germans and the Allies have dug themselves in behind impenetrable trenches protected by artillery fire. The war turns into a gigantic siege on a front of more than 700 kilometers. To progress, there is only one solution: faced with this siege, the soldiers dig tunnels under the enemy fortifications in order to blow them up. They bring back into use an old weapon that they will modernize: underground mines, detonating enemy fortifications from beneath… From 1914 to 1918, under the trenches, another war begins becoming more and more deadly.
In February 1915, it's at the foot of a small Flamish hill (Hill 60) that this mine warfare will really start, at the initiative of the British Forces and units specially trained for this type of operation, the tunnelling companies. During the summer of 1916, whilst the New Zealand tunnellers were digging out mine tunnels under the Arras suburbs, they discovered immense quarries. These soon served to shelter 24 000 British soldiers as they prepared their attack on German positions. This subterranean war will come to a climax during the Battle of Messines, where 470 tonnes of explosives shared out between 19 mines were used to cause the greatest explosion ever created by man at that time.
With the help of world-class experts, computer generated images, re-enactments, and historical archives, you can now discover the incredible underground megastructures of the First World War.